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Friday, February 27, 2009

There are some great photos of the Salt City Sprints out there, some here and some there, but the best photo prize I believe belongs to Ryan, who has some very cool shots of the event and of the people I love who bike around Salt Lake in general:

Good eye and nicely caught moments, there's some really absurd stuff on his photostream that I have no idea about as well.
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Monday, February 23, 2009

You might know that I deliver sandwiches by bike for Jason's Deli, based out of the Gateway. I usually haul a big 'ol cart around and take $100-$300 orders all going to the same place. People are like 'oh cool, I'll order a sandwich from you!' But until now we have had delivery fees and minimum order amounts that made small orders pretty difficult.

But no more! Our owner, Brad Pusey, wants to expand the biking program to deliver individual sandwiches paperboy-style! So we're hiring more bikers! You'd ideally take out 3 or 4 in a run in your bag and deliver them all within 15-25 minutes. You'd make hourly+ tips, I get $8.00 an hour and average $40 a shift in tips.

Until the program takes off you'd function as a backup delivery biker and work at the Deli's To-go counter, but I think it'd soon be a really cool position. Brad's working on designing flashy jerseys for the real bikers to earn, the interview process will probably involve an alleycat-style race I'll organize for you! :)

I usually work 3 hours, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm (sometimes until 2:30), and make between 4 and 11 large deliveries in that time.

If you're interested drop off a resume at the Deli office in Gateway.
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This latest development is amazing to me. Faced with all the depressing, bureaucratic bullshit that our media/justice apparatus is composed of, what does Fairey do? Keeps right at it, right at the heart.

These billboards were installed around the Boston area. They are an exquisite reminder to me that all that matters is passion, and that you can refute politics with poetics. People will be listening.

This century, by no fault of its own, is gonna try and squash you down in the tension between the enormity of the world and the fragility of its human structures. Keep yo' head up.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Over at my other blog-ligation (I'm so damn funny) Zed's released some sweet shirts! Saltcycle Represent! He wants $5 minimum for each shirt, you pick 'em up at the monthly meeting at brewvies, but I say you pay more because the money supports the community and they are so freakin' cool.

*EDIT* HOLY CRAP They're all going to be different too! Zoe just finished this one, what badasses:You know you want one.
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Friday, February 13, 2009

Today I met a Mystic, walking along 6th west down where the road ceases to be city territory and slips into the industrial unknown. Trax is there and the freeway's overhead but it's still thin enough and motley enough to seem like a bit of the netherworld.

I was biking home at a good clip, and passed right by a seated figure in the bike lane. It could have been a statue, if statues were allowed in such places. As I zipped by, dodging traffic, all I caught was an impression of leopard-skin print and many layers, glasses and a pirate's 3-sided hat. I kept riding, double-checking when I could, thinking to myself "whatever that was, it looked like a mystic!" and also thinking "I don't know why I didn't stop and say hello..."

Well I got to Captain Captain studios before I decided I HAD to turn back, and I ran into Tessa Lindsey. Tessa looked busy, running into the studio, but I still shouted "Tessa! Do you have a bike inside!" "Yeah" she said, halfway through the door. "Come on an adventure two blocks away!" "How good of an adventure?""A really good adventure!" I said. Tessa ran inside and grabbed her Schwinn Prelude, which is almost twins with my Super-Sport. We biked for the two blocks, but my mystic was gone. Tessa went back to work. I went to find the mystic.

I found him two blocks further up sixth, walking along, folding chair in hand. He was still in the bike lane, nearer to the trains where it's all gravel and the big diesel engines click-click-click day and night. He's a grizzled old man with trinkets around his neck, a series of brass horns, and robes robes robes stitched together with all matter of patterns. "Hello!" I said."Hello!" He said. He had flashing gnome eyes under his glasses."I don't often see real-live mystics," I said, "I'm Davey." I shook his hand. "I'm Ko-ko-kohinay" he said, and immediately put two of the old brass horns to his mouth. "BOP! BOP! BOP!" went the two horns in a perfect major chord like boats in the fog, reverberating all around and causing pigeons on the idling train cars to take flight. He swapped one horn for another and played the octave of the first, "BAAP! BAAP! BAAP!" "Hi Kohinay," I said. "You woke up all the doves." He didn't correct me. He smiled. "I biked by earlier, but had to check if you were real. You never can tell." I said. He smiled."See you later," I said."See you soon," He said.

A pair of homeless folk nearby coughed and chuckled. Two Latino workers swerved around us on BMX bikes. I biked back home.

Next time I meet him, I'm going to see if I can take his picture, to make sure he's really real. But Tessa says she's seen him before and she's a pretty serious lady, in her own way.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Phillip Bimstein heads out into the world with a microphone and gathers samples to create musical portraits of the environments in which he lives. He's based in Zion and happens to be coming to my Creative Visual Communication Class today. The piece of Phillips which struck me the most was his journey through the Youth Prison in St. George, Lockdown. The jaunting pace with classical instruments creates an operatic feel, swinging through different stories and different emotions.

In that way I was reminded very strongly of Damon Albarn's Monkey, Journey to the West. Monkey is a modern Opera by the same musical mastermind behind the Gorillaz. It's an hour long, in Chinese, and incredible. The strongest thing about the piece taken as a whole, and Phillip's, is that the moods evoked are not dependent on each other, but they add up to a complete sonic piece. The imagery that the music compels is strong, and individual. This was Jamie Hewlett's visualization of one of the songs off of Monkey:

Where Albarn and Hewlett's Monkey is pretty heavily performative and spectacular, Phillip's stories combine that arrangement with an element of human interest. The almost documentary aspect makes it a good way to get a feel for the kid's stories, and turns their bare and sometimes self-conscious statements into lyrics. Behind the words is the sonic buildup of the clicks, ratchets, and slams of the detention center. Together the words and the noises create a whole experience of the center, and the musical arraignment arrangement (thanks to tom for pointing out how unintentionally clever I am) emotionalizes it.
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Saturday, February 7, 2009

I have a soft spot for local music. When someone close to me makes a song it usually resonates more, so I'm not usually a very reliable music guru. I get all emotionally invested. But when Luke Williams told me he was releasing his debut E.P Ancient Eyes I got disproportionately excited, because not only is Luke a local guy but he's a freakin' musical genius as well. He breathes the stuff, has since he was about 12.

None of that matters when you throw on some headphones and start up his album. Kid's got talent, and speaks in crafty tounges. I believe he recorded just about every instrument on the mix himself, and they're all completely pro. For example: The accordion track on We Were Wrong? Luke, frustrated at the lack of a concert organ in the vicinity of his house, dug his dad's old accordian out of the basement and taught himself how to play it for the track in about a day. What a jerk!

I really like what he's done, the moods of the tracks he puts back to back. Songs like Mary Alice, We Were Wrong and Topaz have just enough jive plus sincerity to really last, and the vocal harmonies he throws in here and there really take it up a notch. I feel hints of everything from Jethro Tull to Skybox to Ben Harper. But the song for the ages, the one 5 years before its time in his musical repertoire, for me, is Don't Leave Me Alone...

The lilting progression on the track.... hurts in a really powerful way. Someone as young as Luke (or me, for that matter) shouldn't know this loneliness, to me it's astonishing to hear this kind of reflection in someone else's art. The emotions in this song make me sublimely sad, and his treatment of them makes me smile. Good on ya, Mr. Williams.

Some criticisms: Don't Leave Me Alone gets my personal gold star, but I'm holding out a request for an acoustic, more lo-fi version without the initial blast of blues guitar. I liked the version where you could hear the empty apartment, you know? But it's still a crushingly good song.

Also, Luke's more sunshiney stuff (Sunflower) leaves me a bit empty; I tend to dig his darker, smokier tunes. If this is his debut, though, we can expect some seriously impressive music from him once he's gone on a couple cross-country adventures and suffered a few bumps. Everything along the way promises to be really, really good.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Reading my first-ever post, it appears I've gotten a lot less eloquent. Or maybe just learned to shut up more, I'm not sure. I was still thinking a lot about my place in the world, but more from a writerly perspective. These days I envy my former self, in that he had time to reflect, to crystallize his readings into coherent thoughts. Now I'm reduced to full-throttle babbling, but I'm more multi-media in my efforts!

I'm passionately and exquisitely looking forward to the end of the semester, when I'll graduate, and get to play with all of my ideas in the real world a bit more. I have only the most quiet and private of grand aspirations, in the meantime I'll learn a lot more and hopefully have time to fit in a book or two. And a date. A date'll be nice...

Big ups to ya'll for being paid by my mother to be my friend, and I'll leave you with a song.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Does everyone remember how Lindsey and I submitted a short comic velo-drama to the formidable Bikesnob NYC featuring my pink hipster bike? Well, self-same bike has finally been converted back to its original state, and damn does it ride great. You've come a long way, baby.

Back when it was still a bike for cool people:

In the last year It has served me thousands of miles (though I have a more fendered bike for the winter) and has gone through many changes, but it's still kicking ass. To date it has been to San Francisco and back (in a truck and on a train, but rode for miles and miles while I was there), won 3 'cats, been biked over emigration and the alpine loop in fixed-gear form, earned me my rent money for months, and survived Utah drivers. Hope ya'll have similar luck with your objects. It's my favorite material possession ever.
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Bye

America, the Mid East, overground, underground. I hope to keep the ideas far-reaching. Please join into the mix via comments, and if you'd like to let me know about a thing or two please drop me an email